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Ranked by Men's course rating. Locally Researched by: Joe Halpern and Sean McFadden, Boston Business Journal. Information for this list was supplied by the Massachusetts Golf Association.

The private club on Wilbraham Road opens for a third season this month with a healthy membership and an impressive list of additions and refinements to its 232-acre property. "We're feeling really good,'' club president Guy Antonacci said. "Our membership is at 250 after two years and if you had told me that the first year, I would have taken that all day long.

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To call what Brian Silva did to the former site of the Hampden (Mass.) Country Club a “renovation” nowhere near approaches the breadth, width and depth of what want on there. What started off as a reworking of the bunkers at an abysmal Al Zikorus design (even by his standards) turned into a reported $30 million re-imagining that produced one of the finest golf courses not just in Western Massachusetts but in all of New England. It will send reverberations in the private golf facility world all the way to Hartford, Conn., Worcester, Mass. and southern Vermont. GreatHorse is that good.

When you enter the driveway to GreatHorse in Hampden, you’re greeted by a sign which reads: “Now leaving Western Massachusetts. Welcome to GreatHorse.” On the way out, another sign reads: “Now entering Western Massachusetts. Thank you for visiting GreatHorse.”

Just over a year ago, the Starting Gate, the banquet component of the GreatHorse golf and lifestyle club, was merely studs on a foundation. But weddings were already being booked for the facility, said GreatHorse General Manager Bryan Smithwick, because those who saw what was done with the course and clubhouse understood that the same attention to detail would prevail in the banquet hall. And the view from the top of the mountain didn’t hurt, either.

Among the most impressive skills of a premier course architect is the ability to envision what’s not yet there in the land. It’s difficult enough to puzzle out a new routing from raw terrain. But in many ways, the greater achievement is taking what has been in place for decades as mundane golf ground and reimagining it into something exhilarating.

With a unique vision and deep pockets, the Antonacci family has transformed the bankrupt Hampden Country Club into an elite facility